The Battle Over Heavy T

Terrell Hunter sets scrambled eggs and strips of turkey bacon on a piece of white toast. He slathers strawberry jelly on a second piece of toast and mashes the sandwich together.

The 15-year-old, known to his friends as Heavy T, stands at the kitchen table and eats, dressed in long blue satiny shorts that he slept in. He’s shirtless. Fat spills in waves from his 4-foot-11-inch frame.

It’s just after noon on a weekday in June, but inside Terrell’s house, it feels like 5 a.m. Gold curtains block out the light. A rolled-up bath towel snakes the mail slot in the front door.

Terrell is a few bites into his breakfast when his head jerks toward the front door across the living room. As he listens to the sounds from the street, he drops the sandwich on the table. A car door slams. Terrell lumbers across the apartment, dives for the couch, lies flat on his stomach, and buries his face in the crack.

He lies still and waits.

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From the street, nothing: no voices, no sounds of steps. Terrell remains buried in the couch, waiting for the knock at the door.

A couple of minutes pass, and it doesn’t come. Terrell eases himself up, inches the curtain back and peeps out the picture window.

At the curb sits a blue Ford sedan, not a police cruiser, not a silver Chevy Impala like the guys from the Child and Family Services Agency drive. Terrell tumbles off the couch, walks to the kitchen, and picks up his sandwich.

“This is my life,” he says, putting on his gangster shtick. “I’m not afraid of shit.”

His tough words aren’t enough to knock down Terrell’s fear. He is terrified. Since March, he has lived in dread of getting caught. When someone knocks on the door, he hides. When he steps into his neighborhood, he scans the street. When the phone rings, he answers in an old man’s voice and tells callers Terrell is not home.

Terrell isn’t wanted for drugs, weapons, stolen property, or any of the other crimes that take place in the courtyard behind his home in the Greenleaf Gardens complex of Southwest. He isn’t wanted for breaking the law.

The agency is hunting Terrell because his weight is ruining his health. In March, his mother lost custody of him for not keeping him thin. Since then, the 15-year-old has been an unlikely fugitive, running and hiding, slipping away when he gets caught, fighting to stay free, and getting bigger.

If Terrell had his way, he would be slim, slender, tall, and muscular, like Jay-Z, his favorite rap artist. He’d be covered with tattoos and smoke marijuana and skinny cigars. “I’d be a millionaire,” he says one afternoon, sitting in the dark apartment. “A lot of cars. A lot of girls. I’d be splurging.”

In real life, Terrell is a child who wears his H&M jeans so low it’s hard to walk. He asks 30-year-old women for their phone numbers and sleeps with a giant stuffed dog with plastic eyes the size of silver dollars.

Terrell grew up on a street lined with squat two-story brick town-house apartments. The yards are dotted with cigarette butts and the occasional tiny plastic drug baggie. He lives with his mother, Leslie Abbott, 32, his two younger sisters, and Leslie’s boyfriend, Bruce Wooten, who’s in his 40s, served 20 years on a murder rap and wears a rattlesnake pendant around his neck.

Terrell rarely sees his father, who was the same age Terrell is now when Terrell was born. If Terrell was ever thin, he doesn’t remember. When the other kids grew bony angled and vertical, Terrell stayed stumpy and spread outward, always the shortest and widest kid in his class.

Terrell at age 10, above, and at age 13, below

By 10, Terrell stood just over 4 feet and weighed 210 pounds. Back then, he walked the quarter-mile through the cuts behind his apartment to Bowen Elementary School, stopping several times to rest on the way. At lunch classmates ferried food from the lunchroom to his third-floor classroom. He couldn’t brave the stairs twice in one day.

Leslie blames her son’s weight on steroids he took for asthma and on a mixture of glands and genetics. “Everybody loves food. With Terrell, it stays with him,” she says. “My side of the family, we are big-boned because we are country folk.”

At night, while his family slept, Terrell crept to the kitchen, sneaked food from the refrigerator, and took it up to his second-floor bedroom. He ate ’til the food was gone.

“Every year it was like boom, another 100 pounds, boom, another 100 pounds, boom,” Leslie says.

As Terrell got heavier, his legs bowed inward below the knees from Blount’s Disease, a condition common in obese children. The disease misaligned the bones in his knees, which sent shock waves into the joints when he moved, like a dentist’s pick dragging on an open nerve. Terrell walked tenderly, dipping side to side, uneasy on his feet, moving only when he had to, never chasing a ball, never lining up against another boy to see who was faster.

At home, Terrell crawled across the floor like an infant, climbing the stairs to his bedroom on all fours, sliding down in the morning.

Despite his weight, Terrell and his family lived a normal life before his teens. Money was tight, but Leslie kept Terrell dressed in nice clothes. After school, they sat at the kitchen table, and she helped him with his homework. In the street, though, people stared at the big kid with the wobbly legs. Leslie’s friends asked what she was feeding her son. Soon things got much worse.

(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

One evening in 2005, Terrell, who was 13, returned home from his grandmother’s house in Southeast. He flopped down on the couch and wheezed, sucking rapid tiny breaths of air. He had forgotten to take his asthma inhaler to his grandmother’s house.

His mother handed it to him, and Terrell took a few blasts. The medicine did nothing. “I can’t breathe,” Terrell said to his mother and tried not to cry. It wasn’t Terrell’s first bad asthma attack. His color looked OK. He wasn’t crying. As Leslie debated whether or not to call 911, his breathing got worse.

Terrell describes the attack like this: His lungs felt like they had filled to the top with sand. They were stuck and would not follow his command to breathe. As his head reeled, his panicked breaths turned a rapid volley of gasps.

When the paramedics arrived, they strapped a mask across Terrell’s mouth, hooked him to a machine that pumped soft and cool blasts of air into his lungs. Even with the treatments, his breath was smothered.

Terrell tried to stay cool as they loaded him into the ambulance. “I’m fine,” he told the paramedics. He thought he might be dying, but he didn’t want to overreact if it was nothing.

After waiting for several hours in the emergency room at Howard University Hospital and then being transferred to Children’s Hospital, Terrell blacked out and went into heart failure. Leslie watched hospital staff plunge a tube down her son’s throat and fix him to whirring machines that kept him alive.

“It scared me to death,” she says.

The next thing Terrell remembers, he woke up in a hospital bed “hungry as hell.” His mother was in the room. He had been unconscious for three days.

Three weeks later, when the hospital released Terrell, he did not return home. An ambulance drove him to Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents east of Richmond in rural Virginia. It was a familiar place: Three years earlier, Terrell had spent six months in the hospital’s weight-loss program and dropped 75 pounds.

When the ambulance unloaded Terrell, hospital staff remembered him. This time, he weighed 341 pounds, required oxygen, and was too sick to move.

“I was fat. I was lazy, tired, sleepy, sick, and worried. Stressed out, scared, useless,” Terrell recalls. Being back at the hospital felt like failure.

At Cumberland, doctors worked to turn around the damage. Physical therapists exercised Terrell’s muscles. Nutritionists limited him to 800 calories a day, Stage 1 in the hospital’s program.

Dinner was a bite of turkey, a salad, and a vegetable washed down with

Although doctors prescribed drugs to control his asthma and his food cravings, Terrell felt like he was starving. He begged other patients for their tiny boxes of Golden Grahams and traded his clothes for food. On good days, cafeteria workers slipped up and gave him extra.

Terrell dropped as much as 1.5 pounds a day despite the extra food, his body racing through fat stores and releasing molecules called ketones. The process, called ketosis, made his breath smell like acetone.

When Terrell talks about his time at Cumberland, he complains about how the food tasted like plastic, how a doctor outlawed dodge ball, how staff separated the boys from the girls after one patient worried she was pregnant. “I hate those people. I want to get that place shut down,” he says.

Yet Terrell thrived at Cumberland; he scored A’s and B’s at the hospital school, learned tai chi and yoga, and took aromatherapy sessions in relaxation class. “We sniffed all types of scents and stupid shit, in the dark, lying down,” he recalls.

Terrell woke up at 7 a.m. and slept at 10:30 p.m. On Mondays he lifted weights. Tuesdays was “social room.” On Fridays, he gathered with other kids around a television in the common room for movies.

As his weight fell, Terrell began ambling around the campus behind a walker. Soon nutritionists bumped Terrell to Stage 2 in the weight loss plan—up to 1400 calories a day. The food was the same, but the portions were larger, he says.

In Stage 3, a dietician helped him choose his own food. By then, Terrell had progressed from the walker to running laps around the track, from zero to 15 push-ups.

When the hospital filmed a promotional video, it ended with a shot of Terrell tossing a basketball through a hoop. “Cumberland,” the voiceover says. “Where young people can succeed.”

Terrell was succeeding, but staff worried about what would happen if he returned home.

Leslie and Bruce made the two-hour drive to visit two or three times. They stayed at a lodge on the hospital’s 98-acre campus and checked Terrell out for day trips. For breakfast, they took him to Shoney’s, where Terrell liked the hot syrup at the buffet.

Despite the weight loss, Terrell still suffered; his legs remained bowed and uneven, and his knees flamed with pain.

In June 2006, Cumberland sent him to St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond for surgery. Terrell was excited. He hoped straightening his legs would make him taller.

Terrell remembers lying on the bed before the anesthetic took hold. Doctors had explained the procedure. They would open his legs and expose his bent shin and calf bones. They would saw through the bones, twist them straight and drill silver pins into the bones to anchor them in place.

“They was like, ‘We are going to give you something to help you sleep,’” Terrell says. “I’m like, ‘OK.’ I passed the fuck out. The next thing I woke up in pain like a motherfucker.”

Later, he looked at his legs, wrapped in red bandages and imagined what they looked like underneath. He wouldn’t see the scars until the gauze came off three days later. He returned to Cumberland in a wheelchair, legs ringed by braces the doctors called “tomato cages.”

In late September 2006, Terrell weighed 137 pounds. He had lost 60 percent of his body weight and recovered from his surgery. His leg braces were off. His treatment was finished.

Terrell wakes up at 11:30 a.m. and starts cooking his breakfast, four sausages in a skillet. (Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

While he was in Cumberland, his mother fought a neglect charge related to Terrell’s health problems. She lost full custody, then gained a half-step toward getting him back, winning protective custody just before he was released.

Terrell could go home instead of into the foster-care system. When Leslie picked him up, it had been months since she last saw her son. She thought he looked sick. Bags of skin replaced fat. The bones in his face were visible for the first time.

Terrell moved back into his second-floor bedroom. He came home with his clothes and his rap CDs. And he had something new: a family treatment plan that included meeting with a personal trainer, attending therapy, and following a nutritionist’s diet plan.

At first, kids at school didn’t recognize him, but slowly the old Terrell returned. Leslie did not stick to the regimen, and Terrell slid into his own plan, based on the staples of his past lifestyle. He stopped doing the exercises he learned at the hospital. He traded salad and baked turkey for Big Macs and candy.

Leslie says the backslide is not her fault. Before a knee injury kept her from working, she sold shoes four days a week for $8.50 an hour at Shoe City in Northeast. On her days off, she earned as much as $100 a head braiding hair.

“This boy is 15, going to be 16 years old. I can’t watch him 24 hours a day,” she says. “They want me to hold his hand, take him to the Y, make him eat salad. No, he has to want it for his self. It’s not about me. It’s about him.”

Leslie says she would have had to quit her job to follow the rules. How could she afford that? To her thinking, the healthy food Terrell needed meant she needed more money, not less.

She tried to make the house healthier, baking instead of frying, swapping turkey products for pork. But the truth is, when she was at work, she had no idea what he ate.

As he got bigger, Terrell’s weight caught the attention of CFSA, which monitored Leslie’s custody. Her drug use raised

flags, too. Four months after Terrell left Cumberland, he had put on 36 pounds, and Leslie had tested positive for PCP, opiates, and marijuana.

In court, the agency argued that the drugs made her unable to provide for Terrell’s medical and emotional needs. The judge agreed. The case was no longer about just obesity. In March 2007, Leslie lost custody.

Terrell does not run fast. Chest pushed out, he swings his legs wide and rolls his shoulders back and forth, twisting from his waist. The effort leaves him sweaty and breathless.

Cops and social workers pound on his door, and he takes off.
When they catch up to him he says: “Can I get something to eat first?” (Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

In late March, police and CFSA workers showed up to take Terrell away. When they arrived, Terrell was hanging out inside his apartment with his cousin. The two boys raced out the back door. Terrell ran next to the taller boy, trying to stay in his cousin’s shadow so the police wouldn’t see him.

The ruse didn’t work. An officer snagged Terrell and escorted him to the front yard where a bald guy from CFSA waited with a car.

At the agency’s Sixth Street office near L’Enfant Plaza, Terrell sat surrounded by workers “talking their jibber jabber shit.” It seemed like they knew everything about him. They peppered him with questions. What have you been eating? How often do you go to school? How often do you go to the YMCA?

It felt like an interrogation. Terrell lied. He told them he was eating salad, working out, studying hard, doing everything he was supposed to be doing.

After what felt like an hour, Terrell asked for directions to the bathroom. The workers stayed in the room while he walked into the hall. He found a doorway to a flight of stairs and walked down them, creeping out to the landing on the first floor. Straight ahead sat an information desk and a security guard running bags through an X-ray machine. He walked by them, stepped into the street and kept walking, biting his fingernails and tossing glances over his shoulder.

An hour later, he walked through his front door.

In the weeks that followed, Terrell’s life continued as if nothing had happened. He went to school and hung out with friends in the neighborhood. Sometimes he lifted weights with Bruce at the Y, which had given his family a free membership.

Things were cool, so cool, in fact, that Terrell almost forgot anyone was looking for him.

Then, late one morning in English class, a voice came over the PA system and told Terrell to come to the office. Imagining Bruce downstairs springing him from school, Terrell gathered his jacket and hat and walked to the office.

Downstairs, the bald guy from the agency stood by the office door. There was nowhere to run. Terrell found himself back at the Sixth Street building, again answering questions.

It was before noon when Terrell was picked up from school, and his stomach rumbled. He asked for some food. A woman from the agency put him in a car and drove him to get lunch.

On the way, Terrell thought about jumping out at a light but waited. The woman pulled to the curb in front of McDonald’s, turned off the engine, and handed Terrell some money. She stayed in the car.

At the counter, Terrell ordered a Big Mac, large fries, and a large Oreo McFlurry to go.

With the bag of food in his hand, he walked through the lunch crowd toward a side door. He passed under the golden arches sign outside the door and onto the red brick sidewalk, putting distance between himself and the woman.

After 10 or so blocks, when he knew no one was following him, he sat on the sidewalk and devoured his meal.

Terrell never went back to school. He stayed home, slept past noon, then sat inside, curtains closed, and kept vigil for the men in the silver Chevy Impalas.

Terrell gives one of the cops who caught him a hard time. “Let go of my hand,” he says. “I’m going to sue your ass. What’s your name?” (Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

He quickly developed a system for avoiding the bald guy. If he stayed in bed, everything was cool. He could listen to the man knuckling the door or watch from his window. If he made it ’til 5 p.m., he was free. They wouldn’t come looking for him after quitting time. Wednesdays were bad days to be at home. The bald guy always seemed to show up on Wednesdays.

Terrell was nervous when his mother had the day off, or when his cousin stopped by with his girlfriend and three kids. How are you going to pretend no one is home with the television booming downstairs?

He worried more about the bald man than he did about his weight. Early one afternoon that spring, he sat on his bed in his underwear. It was around 11 a.m., and he had just opened his eyes. Asked about his weight, he guessed he was up to around 190. He was nowhere near as heavy as he had been. But he was gaining.

“I worry about it,” he says. “But as long as I don’t look unattractive, I’m all right.” Terrell does not think he looks unattractive. He has a girlfriend. “I look fat ’cause I got this extra shit,” he says, pointing to the skin that sags at his waist.

Terrell doesn’t like to talk about his weight, but he will talk about food, if the topic is taste, not calories or fat content.

“I just eat when I’m hungry. I eat a lot of junk food—chips, soda, whatever,” he says.

One afternoon, Terrell and Bruce drive to Wendy’s for lunch. Bruce orders a chicken sandwich. Terrell asks for a Baconator, a small fry, and a small vanilla Frosty, 1,480 calories in all.

Good evening, Terrell,” jokes Bruce as Terrell mopes down the stairs in shorts and a T-shirt, his mouth open in a deep yawn. It’s 11:30 a.m., a Wednesday in mid-May. Leslie is off work, but she has two heads to braid.

Terrell resists getting in the cruiser. When the officer finally gets him inside, he sticks his feet out so that he can’t close the door. (Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

Lately, she has started to worry. Terrell’s report card arrived from his final semester. He failed Spanish, English, algebra, everything.

Earlier, after walking her daughters to school, she told Bruce it might be better for Terrell to get caught, to go through the process, to get help. Maybe he could stay with his grandmother, she reasoned.

“These people are like leeches,” Bruce yells. “You start with them, and they keep on pinching. They’re taking a teenage boy and turning him into the streets. When the only thing he’s doing is eatin’? And that’s not a crime.”

Bruce is pissed. With all the fat kids out on the street, why were they bothering Terrell? Leslie has a teenage niece who’s probably 300 pounds. “Why they not pickin’ her up?” he asks. He was thinking about filing a lawsuit.

The agency had also started checking on Terrell’s sisters, taking them from school to the hospital for checkups, interviewing them about Leslie and Bruce. The Terrell problem was snowballing, and Leslie wanted it over.

“I just want Terrell to get back in school, to get his education,” she says, looking like she might cry. “He has to repeat the ninth grade. Terrell’s too smart to be doing that.”

In a week, they had another court date. Leslie knew if Terrell showed up, they would take him away. She was thinking that might not be such a bad thing.

“If they take you, I want you to be ready for that,” she says when Terrell reaches the table.

“They ain’t taking me anywhere,” Terrell says.

He had a plan. He would show up to court a little late as if he wasn’t staying with his family. He would explain to the judge why everyone should stop messing with him.

“What are you going to tell the judge?” Leslie asks.

“I’m going to tell the judge to lick my ass crack,” Terrell says. “No seriously,” he starts again. He would tell the judge he shouldn’t have to redo the ninth grade since they chased him away from school. He’d say he was done gaining weight and that he wanted to stay home.

Leslie hands him a dollar and change for the bus before she heads out the door with Bruce.

“You want me to shut the door?” she asks.

“Leave it open,” Terrell says, sunk deep in the worn-out couch.

Terrell walks to the kitchen and sets four links of turkey sausage sizzling on one of the good burners. Breakfast will be sausage and eggs, and he’s thinking about making pancakes, too, when a police car creeps by outside. No big deal, Terrell thinks. Cops pass all day long.

Terrell walks to the front door just to make sure. With his body mashed against the open door, he peeps his head out. Across the street, near the bus stop, stands the bald man from CFSA. Terrell pulls his head inside. He eases the front door shut and spins the lock in the door knob.

He walks to the kitchen, stares across the living room at the metal door and waits. The sausages sizzle in the pan.

The door erupts. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

“Open the door!” a man’s voice yells.

Terrell tiptoes to the door and hesitates. He reaches for the door, spins the deadbolt fast, turns, and walks upstairs to his bedroom. He reappears wearing a pair of black Nike Air Max high tops.

“Open the door!” one of the men yells through the mail slot.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

The door shakes in its frame.

Terrell stands in the kitchen, not moving. He cracks the back screen door open, peeks out toward the clothesline, and slips out.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

“Open the door!”

Neighbors are gathering in their front yards. Soon, an officer appears around the side of Terrell’s apartment, gripping him by the wrist. A lady down the street yells something unintelligible.

“Fuck you,” Terrell shouts and jabs the middle finger of his free hand in the air toward the lady. Then he’s in the back seat of a cruiser, sticking his feet out so the officer can’t close the door.

Like before, the agency didn’t hold him for long. Again he found himself at the agency table. This time, when a worker asked him about his weight, he says he stripped off his T-shirt, dropped his baggy shorts, and paraded around the room in his underwear to show them firsthand.

And like before, there was McDonald’s for lunch. This time, a man walked with him into the restaurant and stood there as he ordered a Big Mac. Terrell ate his sandwich in tiny bites, just to give the guy shit.

Again things got weird. When they arrived back at the agency, Terrell refused to go in. He kept walking. The man yelled at him but then just let him walk away, like there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

In fact, there wasn’t, except to call the police. Social workers try to control children with “social work and helpful methods,” says Mindy Good, a CFSA spokeswoman. “You could follow the kid and say, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ and talk about things,” she says. “But would you tackle him? No.”

Then why do they keep coming for Terrell? That is what Leslie can’t understand: “If you already know he’s going to run, and you’re going to let him go, leave him the fuck alone,” she says.

One afternoon in late June, he is lying half-asleep under a Scooby Doo blanket. Leslie’s nephew and his girlfriend’s 5-year-old son are sitting on the edge of Terrell’s bed playing NBA ShootOut on a PlayStation. A week ago, a judge committed Terrell back to Cumberland. The next time he gets caught, they won’t take him to Sixth Street. He’ll go straight to the hospital, back to Stage 1, 800 calories a day, tai chi, and physical therapy.

Terrell has been thinking about that. For him, Cumberland is prison. He has already spent almost two years there, and he’s determined never to go back. If they catch him, he’s already started plotting his escape. But Cumberland is “surrounded by all these forests and shit,” and Terrell doesn’t know the lay of the land. Maybe he could hitchhike out or pay someone on the side of the road to bring him back to town?

“Why don’t you just go down there?” says his cousin, looking away from the game. “You only got a certain amount of time to be down there.”

“I’m not an idiot, man,” Terrell says. “They are bound to keep me down there for years and shit. I’m not going.”

Downstairs, Leslie is braiding a woman’s hair. Walker, Texas Ranger, is dropping bad guys with karate kicks on television. The front door is open to keep the apartment cool. If the men show up today, Terrell knows he is doomed.

But he doesn’t get up and hit the streets running. He closes his eyes and falls back asleep.

By early September, Terrell had enough. He had spent much of the summer at his grandmother’s house in Southeast, dodging the CFSA. He had one close call, hiding in the closet at home when social workers stopped by.

It was boring, he says. The way he saw it, the running would probably continue until he was 18, when they would have to leave him alone.

“That isn’t exciting to me, man,” he says one afternoon, sitting in his mother’s house. “I get tired of that shit.”

Besides, Terrell explains, he has a new problem. He started Wilson High School two weeks earlier and still does not have new clothes to wear.

They are bothering the monther because she is allowing her so to endanger his life by not providing healthy food alternatives for him. I guess one brush with death was not enough to make her see that obesity is definately a killer. I'm sure more than one person in her big boned "country people" family has died from complications related to being over weight. It's a shame that CFSA has to try to parent - where she cannot. They should lock her up - maybe it will save her other children from what will surely come to Heavy T - death.

That boy is 15 years old! He should know and does know what and what not to eat. Providing healthy alternatives is one thing, watching him 24/7 is another. Sure, his mother can turn him over to the state and let them take him somewhere, but just like he's done--he'll just run away. What should she do, turn her son away, put him out into the streets...like she said "all because [he] wants to be chunky"?! Obviously he wants to be the way he is or more accurately he wants to be left alone. It's like even when he does go to school they hunt him down and then he doesn't go (although he uses some pretty lame excuses). I bet he would go if they LEFT HIM ALONE! jeesh

Um, the kid is wearing expensive designer jeans and Nike, his mom makes barely minimum wage and the kid doesn't have a job. What is wrong with this picture?? The mom deserves to be locked up for being an enable with a capital "E." If this were my kid, no, I wouldn't throw him out on the streets. But, I also certainly wouldn't supply him with fatty, disgusting food and clothe him in designer duds.

I feel bad for the young brother he cant even go to school because they will catch him because of his weight half of these children in the district of columbia have problems with their weight he's at that age where it's up to him to push himself to want to loose the weight not anyone else so to the police and child protective services leave him alone and let him have a normal childhood

I have never been read anything so utterly shameful and disgraceful as this article! First of all, his mother should be brought up on child neglect charges for allowing this to happen. ANd I am personally offended that she would attribute the family's weight to being fromt he south. I am a recent transplant from North Carolina with an asthmatic son who was on steroids as well. But I dont ALLOW him to stuff his face with Mcdonald's and Wendys. I take the time to cook healthy nutritious meals for him. I am a single parent as well and I KNOW how there is never enough time in the day to do everything, but being a RESPONSIBLE PARENT is a very serious, extremly hard 24 hour a day job. If the house isnt full of crap he wont eat crap! You MAKE him go to school. You MAKE him responsible for his actions. He doesnt go to school, you can best belelive there would be NO video games, no cartoon network, no radio or anything else for him to play with.
We as a race need to step up to the responsiblities of PARENTING our kids on a full time basis. His weight is HIS MOTHER'S Responsibility. His inattendence in school is HIS MOTHER'S responsibility. She must REQUIRE excellence from him or he'll just be another obese, uneducated man/child lost to the system. It is no one's responsibility to care for her child but hers and I personally think SHE should serve time for her reckless endangerment of this minor.

This is truly sad. This child is dying right in front of his mother's eyes and it doesn't seem to bother her at all!! And we (the readers) don't have to "know her" to comment. We're going by the stupidity that's being said in this article. The "leave my fat son alone" attititude is what will kill this child before his time. No real effort on her part and obviously no respect with all the cursing he does in front of her. Hopefully, child protective services will step in and take him away permanently and put him into a positive atmosphere. She could use some mental help too!!!! He needs to be away from her. SOON!!!!

CFSA is the cause of many households failing in there responsibilities in the District. I was in the system for nearly 10 year because I was a single parent that happened to be a male. There were false allegations set upon my two kids &amp; me at the time, I also endured slanderous allegation about my fiancée at the time. There was no evidence of abuse or neglect out of three incidents reports to CFSA, which were inconclusive.
I think this family should be left alone, but if CFSA is involved, this kid will never trust anyone even the Bald Head Guy…
U might have a law suite?
Terrell, stay Positive &amp; Productive
God Bless

This is the most disgusting thing I have read in a long time. How much did the taxpayers have to shell out for this useless blob's knee surgery, his inhalers, and the "fat farm?" Sounds to me like the authorities went to incredible lengths to show him how to live right -- tai chi, yoga, not to mention the weight room and the track. And it worked -- he went down to 137 lbs (still a little chunky for his height, but a huge improvement over 300+ lbs). Glandular problems, my foot - his only problems are good old-fashioned sloth and gluttony.

And how did he repay taxpayers for all they did for him? He did so by giving us all the finger. As soon as he got out, he went right back to his old bad habits and bad attitudes, sitting around watching manufactured entertainment for idiots and stuffing his face with food he doesn't need. He's going to be completely unemployable for his entire life, what with his weight-related health problems, not to mention his shitty attitude. Prediction: as soon as he turns 18, he's going to go on disability, and for the rest of his life the taxpayers are going to have to pay to support him in the style to which he has become accustomed, not to mention paying medicare for his obesity-related health problems.

And this useless blob has a girlfriend?! He is manifestly incapable of taking care of himself, and yet it's only a matter of time before he knocks her up and the taxpayers have to foot the bill for all their useless blob children.

The existence of people like Heavy T is an unassailble argument for eugenics.

This is the most disgusting thing I have read in a long time. How much did the taxpayers have to shell out for this useless blob's knee surgery, his inhalers, and the "fat farm?" Sounds to me like the authorities went to incredible lengths to show him how to live right -- tai chi, yoga, not to mention the weight room and the track. And it worked -- he went down to 137 lbs (still a little chunky for his height, but a huge improvement over 300+ lbs). Glandular problems, my foot - his only problems are good old-fashioned sloth and gluttony.

And how did he repay taxpayers for all they did for him? He did so by giving us all the finger. As soon as he got out, he went right back to his old bad habits and bad attitudes, sitting around watching manufactured entertainment for idiots and stuffing his face with food he doesn't need. He's going to be completely unemployable for his entire life, what with his weight-related health problems, not to mention his shitty attitude. Prediction: as soon as he turns 18, he's going to go on disability, and for the rest of his life the taxpayers are going to have to pay to support him in the style to which he has become accustomed, not to mention paying medicare for his obesity-related health problems.

And this useless blob has a girlfriend?! He is manifestly incapable of taking care of himself, and yet it's only a matter of time before he knocks her up and the taxpayers have to foot the bill for all their useless blob children.

What an outstanding article! Exposing the filthy hypocrisy of the State for what it is!

The government is ruining this child and this mother's lives. It is tearing this small family apart and trying to dictate to both of them how they should run their lives.

This is some excellent journalism, well written, entertaining and great quotes. Three cheers to Terrell, for never letting the government get him down and for always fighting to be free.

To all those calling for the mother to be brought up on child neglect charges and locked up (DID YOU READ THE ARTICLE?!): would you, personally, be willing to take it upon yourself to divorce this mother from her son and to imprison her and then to not only fund but force Terrell to carry out his "healthy lifestyle alternatives?" If not, I find it odd that you think it's okay to ask other people to do it in your stead.

You're the real slobs here. Leave Terrell alone, you have no business dictating to him how he should live his life (or bring about its end)... no matter how distasteful you may find the choices he makes.

It's a shame, but I've got to agree with Taylor. It's clear the state/District has no business trying to save this young man from himself. It should save it's time and money for someone who won't waste it.

There's a lot of people reading this article and commenting BASED on their "issues"- not what they've read.
Those who love to hate those "no good ghetto mothers" scream "This is the most disgusting thing I have every read! Lock her up! Take her kids from her! She clearly is too lazy to parent! We taxpayers are footing the bill!" All this because her son overeats, sneaks food while the family is a sleep, and binge eats while he's at school?
The mother did make some attempts to help him ( by not frying food and leaving off pork). But clearly she does not have the time, mental energy, or steady money (a few desinger jeans and knock off Nike tees can be bought for much less than weekly supplies of healthy food) and she has something wrong with both her mental state and her mentality. She is ignorant and a bit "backward", but nothing in the story said she didn't care about her child or wanted him to die! Read the article AGAIN! She works for a living ( she IS a taxpayer too- jerks) and spends more time with her kids than many of you do. Her daughters do not have this problem. She has a niece that is very obese. I guess she is to blame for that too? Clearly, the boy has special needs that she can not handle and her shakey boyfriend is not helping matters. Can we find and lock up the father? No! That's too hard.
It is typically easy ,racist/classist "fun" to attack a black mother or the "po white trash" mothers who are the only other ones having their kids taken away because of weight. But this problem exists worse on many "Indian" Native American reservation! Nike has actually designed an athletic shoe for Native Americans to combat severe youth obesity. Native Americans- like blacks- are fond of Logos/ labels- and Nike knows it. Their childhood obesity issues are also partly genetic, but mostly about bad habits (food, alcohol, drugs) and broken families or communities. Shall we take their kids, too? We've done it before.
When was the last time a middle class white parent lost their custody because they LET their daughters starve themsleves to death! Why does no one expect these people to be able to monitor what their pale, frail duaghters eat or throw up? Why is so much more expected of black, inner city mothers- than of anyone else? Or do folks wait for stories like this so that you can have an excuse to says "welfare queen", " lazy unwed, teen mother", "how many kids does she have?", "whose paying for this?," sterilze them", "these people are what's wrong with America,the cities, the n-words, or OUR race...blah, blah?
They should take Terrell away because his mother CAN"T help him- not because she doesn't want to! And at a stubborn 15 years old, he is a burden to his family. He would be to ANY family.

Terrell is treated the way a family member treats a mentally disabled person, police intervention through a petition from a Judge, all to save his health. What I can't understand is the mother's attitude. Surely she has to see how this with affect him in the long run? Asthma, maybe heart problems, the muscles trying to support his weight sooner or later will probably permanently collapse. The mother doesn't have custody and Terrill calls himself being smart only to run back to that situation. If she doesn't find a way to handle his weight problem; I afraid something terrible could happen. I pray it won't come to that.

I think the system in a bane attempt is using all their efforts to control the problem; save Terrill's life. Terrill through a program was at a healthy weight. But if the support becomes one way there's not much hope. It's disgusting but soluable I feel.

Some of the comments here are almost as terrible as what the CSFA and the police are doing to this poor kid. I can't decide if they're more racist or more fat-phobic.

For anyone who thinks what you eat determines how fat your are, trying eating the same things as your naturally skinny friends for six months. Yeah, Terrell's eating habits aren't helping him, but no matter how well he eats, he's never going to be skinny (unless you want to make him anorexic, that'll be *great* for his health). So what distinguishes Terrell from another overweight kid who's not so big he's getting hounded by the police? Genetics. Which neither he nor his mother can control. Maybe if people were telling him "eat healthier! eat healthier!" instead of "lose weight! lose weight!" he'd be doing better - maybe he and his mother would understand that it's not about losing pounds, but about making sure you get the stuff you need - and if you get a lot of that stuff, so be it!

Right now all it is, is a vicious cycle. He's unable to exercise or, more importantly, go to school. What options does that leave him with? Great job, society. You've accomplished so much.

I live in South Carolina and we have had the same thing happen here.A mother was accused of child abuse because her son was over weight. She was taking the boy to the doctor for the problem, but that was'nt good enough for DSS. They said that a neighbor had seen her taking him to the grocery store and buying cookies,so they took the boy from his home.When did we become a country that can take your kids for whatever reason they want? The sorry lawyers in this state will only defend you if you've been injured,bankrupt,have a DUI. If it's something of importance as having your kid removed by DSS they won't even talk to you.I actually had a lawyer tell me to go up against the DSS was a lose lose situation. The Lawyers need to get some guts!!!!!!!!!!

"When was the last time a middle class white parent lost their custody because they LET their daughters starve themsleves to death! Why does no one expect these people to be able to monitor what their pale, frail duaghters eat or throw up? " BRAVO LEONA!!!

I agree with Shauna: you racists should leave this kid alone, and let him die in a puddle of his own feculence. He's killing himself, and while his personality is toxic to the extreme, he at least is too fat to cause much of a danger to the public at large.

After all, he is 15 years old. Why should this have anything to do with the Dept of Child and Family Services?

CFSA are hounding these folks because they are black and Terrell is fat. This is all about race.

That the child was 210 pounds at age ten, 341 by age thirteen, that he could barely get around his own home before he nearly died from an obesity-triggered asthma attack, that he had to have surgery to lengthen legs bowed by weight, that he successfully endured months of treatment only to backslide when he got home - none of that is germane.

I mean, his mother did start baking instead of frying, and switched from pork to turkey! What more do they want?

Clearly this paragon of motherhood, this Proverbs 31 woman, has her son's best interests at heart. Clearly she cares enough about him to allow him the freedom to spew filth from his lips in her presence. Clearly she cares enough about setting an example of self-actualization to him and his sisters that she shares their family home with a man to whom she is not married. Clearly she cares enough about his education that she argues he shouldn't repeat ninth grade because he's intelligent - those failing grades don't mean anything. Clearly she cares enough about his future that she allows him to hide out from those interfering oreo MFs at CFSA. Who can blame her?

So what's the alternative, lock Terrell up in a "fat rehabilitation camp" until he is 18 years old? Is that really going to solve his medical problems? Are the people in child protective services really so certain that three years of incarceration is going to "keep him healthy?"

What they're talking about is controlled starvation. But starving this 15-year old isn't going to help him in the long run. Assuming he is locked up (at great cost to the gov't), when he leaves the facility his body will re-establish itself at the weight to which it is "set."

He is probably going to be fat the rest of his life. So what's next, eugenics? Forced sterilization? Forced incarceration and starvation after 18? For the "crime" of being fat?

First it's poor black families. Then it's the rest of us.

And total agreement with the commenter who wanted to know why parents of anorexic girls (white, middle or upper middle class) have their kids in medical crisis, and yet are not prosecuted for "child endangerment." It's obvious why not - their kids look the way people are "supposed" to look.

This is a damn shame. This boy should want to keep himself healthy. I know its cheaper to buy Mickey D's but you can still buy healthy with the same amount of money. I wish his family would put a foot up that a** because they are not helping him the way they should. I wonder what Momma gonna do when her son is 21, living at home, fat as hell, can't get no job cause he doesn't at least have a H.S. Diploma. I guess change gonna come than but it will be too late.

I can't stand it that the government can take kids away and starve them just because they are fat. It is torture to be on a low calorie diet of rabbit food when you are hungry all the time. Is it really ok to torture a kid to the point he runs away and hides? Nobody seems to care that maybe there is some reason the kid is that hungry. Steroids, for asthma, are known to cause weight gain and diabetes. Blood sugar fluctuations are one thing that will make you hungry enough to eat a house and it is obvious this kid has untreated metabolic problems. I could see if they took him away and treated his medical problems and fed him healthy food, but healthy eating and exercise will not make everyone thin. Concentration camps, like the one he was sent to, will but it isn't healthy and it has taken away this kid's chance and desire for an education.

My heart goes out to the family featured in this article. The bottom line is- Terrell has a food addiction and he can't control the urge to overeat.Just like all other addictions, it's not even about the substance abused, but the issues that cause a person to do it in the first place. A look beneath the surface would show there is much more than what we read here. The mother's own drug use is an indication of that. There is no easy solution to addiction, but the problem is we live in a society where your appearance equals your worth. He is no different from some of the readers or thier family members- secret drinkers, pot smokers, crackheads or cocaine sniffers. The only difference is that his addiction is more apparent due to his size, and unlike other addictions, he must face that substance evey day. He has to eat to live. If we all had little bubbles over our heads indicating our own "drug of choice/substance of abuse"- i doubt that most of those bubbles would be empty. All of the very negative comments about Terrell and his mother shows a lack of understanding and compassion. The judgemental (so called "taxpayer") are the ignorant ones, because they should know better. Its apparent the cycle of abuse, poverty/low income, and lack of education play a part here.No doubt obesity is a problem for a lot of people- but attacking them insted of the core issues they have isnt helpful at all.

Great...and the mindless ghetto continues to flourish in DC. Ghetto mindset, ghetto lifestyle...why is anyone suprised when they read stuff like this.

Excuse me for my lack of sympathy here but this is just another example of a disfunctional ghetto family that will beget another poor disfunctional family that will live off Uncle Sam till they die.

His parents had him when they were 15, mother is a useless crack addict who obviously couldn't give a rats ass about her son.

This kid has had his chance. The tax payer has spent hundreds of thousands on this kid, paying for his fat camps and all the medical treatments and issues he has from being fat. We're paying social services to track this kid down a couple times a week and he runs from them every time they try to help.

He will never finish school, will spend every day the rest of his life wondering how he can get the bling all the black folk are wearing on MTV, turn to a life of crime to finance it, probably die at 30 from complications from massive obesity or a shootout with the police.

This same story plays itself out in the every ghetto in every city of this country daily. We all know how it ends.

THERE ARE CHILDREN BEING MOLESTED IN THEIR HOMES BY RELATIVES AND FRIENDS OF FAMILIES! THERE ARE CHILDREN BEING BEATEN AND TORTURED ON A DAILY BASIS! THERE ARE CHILDREN BEING SOLD TO DRUG DEALERS BECAUSE THE MOTHERS HAVE SOLD THEMSELVES OUT AND ARE NO LONGER WANTED OR DESIRED BY THE DEALERS! THERE ARE CHILDREN BEING FORCED TO RAISE THEY SIBLINGS AND THEY ARE ONLY BABIES THEMSELVES. THERE ARE CHILDREN NOT BEING FED BECAUSE THE PARENTS HAVE USED UP ALL THE MONEY WHICH THEY RECEIVE FROM WELFARE FOR THEM ON DRUGS FOR THEMSELVES! AND CFSA HAS TIME TO CHASE DOWN A CHILD WHO IS OVERWIEIGHT. GRANTED HIS HEALTH MAY BE OF GREAT IMPORTANCE BUT THAT SHOULD BE A PLANNED EVENT BETWEEN HIS MOTHER,HER SON AND A NUTRITIONIST. IF YOU WANT TO HELP HIM, TEACH HIM AND THE FAMILY TO HELP THEMSELVES . USE THE SERVICES OF A NUTRITIONIST THAT CAN VISIT THE HOME MAYBE TWICE A MONTH WITH A BIWEEKLY MEAL AND SNACK PLAN AND A "HOW TO "SHOPPING LIST OF FOODS THAT THE MOTHER CAN AFFORD TO PURCHASE TO ENSURE HER SON'S WEIGHT CONTROL PLAN WILL BE A SUCCESS. STOP CHASING THAT CHILD AND ALLOW HIM TO RETURN TO SCHOOL AND LIVE HIS LIFE IN PEACE AND GO WORK WITH THE CHILDREN THAT HAVE MORE CRIRICAL PROBLEMS TO SOLVE!! BESIDES THERE ARE A LOT OF OVERWEIGHT CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES. IS THIS AGENCY THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES MAIN FOCUS GOING TO NOW BE OVERWEIGHT CHILDREN INSTEAD OF ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN?

This article was well written and definitely worth reading - it describes things very realy life and action packed like you are stitting in his living room yourself watching what's going on.

What kept crossing my mind during this story is why is the government after him specifically, when there are thousands of other obese children? I agree that there should be services that *encourage* &amp; support him in healthy habits, but to make it this cat &amp; mouse game is a waste of Heavy T's &amp; the governements' time. Obviously their stupid tactic hasn't worked so far, so why haven't they tried something other than fear &amp; intimidation?

The other thing that crossed my mind is has he seen an obesity specialist to get his hormones and stuff checked? And perhaps maybe his eating habits is really a symptom of some deeper issue like is he depressed or is he just acting out (other kids his age easily have yelling fits, or drug sprees, or whatever, maybe the eating thing is what's making him feel in control &amp; pleasure.

It seems like he has a lot of potential to succeed in school if given the chance. Heavy T, if you're reading this, I would encourage you to go back to school and prove that you can do it. I know you can.

BTW, if you really really can't go back to school for some reason, doesn't the school have to send a tutor to the house (such as for kids with disabilities or on sick leave) to help the student catch up &amp; excel in school.

dis is BRITTNEY frum the OY terrel you is my fam to me and they need to leave u alone. they can't force u to do any thing u dn't want to do u hav to b readt on your own. jus b careful daneille n i LOVE u always. OY n we out!

there one thing that every revelutionist need to understand in holding down your cause -What am I learning in this- What is in place for this young person to learn not only his standerd education, but to also learn that the way you are made is not a good enough exscuss for hiding from life. Becouse to be harrasing a youth, regardless of complicating his situation is and he resorts to hiding in closets when he didn't have a problem being and learning with kids his age. This our system put place to be of service for those in need not for those with a slight of greed. There is no concern on the education of this young brotha. Not when your instilling a fear to attend in him. Just the suggestion alone of having to go to that fortress of mind alteration masked as a hospital where there I too was once sent for reprograming for something that I now know is just me who I am, what my god created. Heavy-T has allready come too that understanding. Having that kind of understanding of self at such a young age is a sign of a upbringing smothered in love and that's what matters when there is no other concerns of abuse or neglect. Hey why not use the money this government is paying out to "treat" someone in another state, let support and or start our on initiatives that can do the same thing here in the District . Heavy -T learn what you need to do for spirit &amp; mind. Practice it. It will motivate you to want to take of body. For it is the only tool we have to live our dreams with.

I can't believe the racist comments that were left here. Two people actually calling this horrible situation a justification for Eugenics? I suppose you're nicely insulated in your white ghetto and can easily pass judgment on a family in crisis -- a crisis which the "Authorities" have seemed to exacerbate with their own actions.

Has no one else caught the irony of the social workers taking Terrell to get fast food on several of the occasions in which they were bringing him in for questioning about his weight? I pray that Terrell will find the strength to overcome his food addiction and begin to lead a healthier lifestyle, and that he will be able to do this without the harassment of social workers who cart him off for calorie laden Mega Meals before questioning him about his lifestyle choices.

The child protective services need to worry about children who are truly being abused and molested, period. There are a lot of fat-phobic people out there as well as racist, which is sad in this day and age. The truly sidkening thing here is all the judgemental, piety going on. I don't see child protective services "rescueing" wasteing way anorexic waifs.

It is truly sad that the state and the authorities have to track this little boy down on a constant basis. True, I do believe they should leave him alone because it's not going to go anywhere with him trying to change his eating habits, but in the same it's pretty pathetic. The mother does have alot to do with the situation and when did trying once was an accomplishment. I think if she actively and consistently tried to help maintain her son's recovery from Cumberland then maybe I can sympathize with her, but not once did I hear that in this article. I think that he should step up to the plate and take care of his self and do what he has to do to make sure that he is healthy to see what else the world can offer if he chose to see it. Gluttony is a sin and honestly I don't seeing him living too much longer...considering the habits he wishes to maintain.

There once was a time when being poor meant you had a body hardened by physical labor. It meant you dressed plainly and ate plain food. It also meant you knew how to do things. If you were a man, you knew how to hang a door and how to hitch a team of horses to a plow; if you were a woman, you knew how to cook a pot of bean stew and how to mend a hole in a pair of trousers. The word poor was once very nearly synonymous with the word "humble." Today, the word "poor" describes people who are fat and loud and insolent, who wear designer clothes, who gorge themselves on fast food in brightly colored take-out packages, and who while away their days playing video games and watching manufactured entertainment for idiots on their dvd players. Heavy T is the very epitome of this parasitic sub-culture of people who are literally good for nothing, who do nothing but consume consume consume. I'm tired of having to pay for him and his ilk. He's had more than enough chances. Cut him off.

I'd love to know if this worthless sloth and his family are living in public housing. Anyone willing to wager a bet?

Let the fat kid eat himself to death. It’s clear that neither he nor his horrible excuse for a mother have the ability to logically comprehend reality. He'll become (and currently is) nothing more than a leach on society.

Out of all the good my cousin and aunt has done it's sad that the CFSA only and main focus through out this whole story was the bad my cousin was invovled in and the struggles my aunt had to go through.

It's pitiful and hurt that some of you have the audacity to talk down on the deceased the way some of you have done. that's just the insecurities within your self. And to Josh yes he did live in public housing, and so do I, but that doesn't mean anything. You say it as if people from the hood living in public housing can't make it out.

all i can say is that shit is really sad he shouldnt be that damn big his fatt nasty ass dont likr loosing wait dont like take bath butt all he like to do is EAT.EAT.EAT.EAT....AND HE WILL BEE DEAD SOONNNNN keep want to sneak food at night and when u eat at night you gang more ,,more and more (WEIGHT)

there one thing that every revelutionist need to understand in holding down your cause -What am I learning in this- What is in place for this young person to learn not only his standerd education, but to also learn that the way you are made is not a good enough exscuss for hiding from life. Becouse to be harrasing a youth, regardless of complicating his situation is and he resorts to hiding in closets when he didn't have a problem being and learning with kids his age. This our system put place to be of service for those in need not for those with a slight of greed. There is no concern on the education of this young brotha. Not when your instilling a fear to attend in him. Just the suggestion alone of having to go to that fortress of mind alteration masked as a hospital where there I too was once sent for reprograming for something that I now know is just me who I am, what my god created. Heavy-T has allready come too that understanding. Having that kind of BEING FED BECAUSE THE PARENTS HAVE USED UP ALL THE MONEY WHICH THEY RECEIVE FROM WELFARE FOR THEM ON DRUGS FOR THEMSELVES! AND CFSA HAS TIME TO CHASE DOWN A CHILD WHO IS OVERWIEIGHT. GRANTED HIS HEALTH MAY BE OF GREAT IMPORTANCE BUT THAT SHOULD BE A PLANNED EVENT BETWEEN HIS MOTHER,HER SON AND A NUTRITIONIST. IF YOU WANT TO HELP HIM, TEACH HIM AND THE FAMILY TO HELP THEMSELVES . USE THE SERVICES OF A NUTRITIONIST THAT CAN VISIT THE HOME MAYBE TWICE A MONTH WITH A BIWEEKLY MEAL AND SNACK PLAN AND A "HOW TO "SHOPPING LIST OF FOODS THAT THE MOTHER CAN AFFORD TO PURCHASE TO ENSURE HER SON'S WEIGHT CONTROL PLAN WILL BE A SUCCESS. STOP CHASING THAT CHILD AND ALLOW HIM TO RETURN TO SCHOOL AND LIVE HIS LIFE IN PEACE AND GO WORK WITH THE CHILDREN THAT HAVE MORE CRIRICAL PROBLEMS TO SOLVE!! BESIDES THERE ARE A LOT OF OVERWEIGHT CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES. IS THIS AGENCY THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES MAIN FOCUS GOING TO NOW BE OVERWEIGHT CHILDREN INSTEAD OF ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN? There's a lot of people reading this article and commenting BASED on their "issues"- not what they've read.
Those who love to hate those "no good ghetto mothers" scream "This is the most disgusting thing I have every read! Lock her up! Take her kids from her! She clearly is too lazy to parent! We taxpayers are footing the bill!" All this because her son overeats, sneaks food while the family is a sleep, and binge eats while he's at school?
The mother did make some attempts to help him ( by not frying food and leaving off pork). But clearly she does not have the time, mental energy, or steady money (a few desinger jeans and knock off Nike tees can be bought for much less than weekly supplies of healthy food) and she has something wrong with both her mental state and her mentality. She is ignorant and a bit "backward", but nothing in the story said she didn't care about her child or wanted him to die! Read the article AGAIN! She works for a living ( she IS a taxpayer too- jerks) and spends more time with her kids than many of you do. Her daughters do not have this problem. She has a niece that is very obese. I guess she is to blame for that too? Clearly, the boy has special needs that she can not handle and her shakey boyfriend is not helping matters. Can we find and lock up the father? No! That's too hard.
It is typically easy ,racist/classist "fun" to attack a black mother or the "po white trash" mothers who are the only other ones having their kids taken away because of weight. But this problem exists worse on many "Indian" Native American reservation! Nike has actually designed an athletic shoe for Native Americans to combat severe youth obesity. Native Americans- like blacks- are fond of Logos/ labels- and Nike knows it. Their childhood obesity issues are also partly genetic, but mostly about bad habits (food, alcohol, drugs) and broken families or communities. Shall we take their kids, too? We've done it before.
When was the last time a middle class white parent lost their custody because they LET their daughters starve themsleves to death! Why does no one expect these people to be able to monitor what their pale, frail duaghters eat or throw up? Why is so much more expected of black, inner city mothers- than of anyone else? Or do folks wait for stories like this so that you can have an excuse to says "welfare queen", " lazy unwed, teen mother", "how many kids does she have?", "whose paying for this?," sterilze them", "these people are what's wrong with America,the cities, the n-words, or OUR race...blah, blah?
They should take Terrell away because his mother CAN"T help him- not because she doesn't want to! And at a stubborn 15 years old, he is a burden to his family. He would be to ANY family.

First Off Lets Get This Clear NON OF YOU I MEAN NONE OF YOU KNOW MY FUCKING NEPHEW OR HIS LIFESTYLE YALM LISTENING TO THIS WEAK ASS WHACK ASS ARTICLE FUCK YALL ALL YALL DISGYSTING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS SO QUICK TO JUDGE HIM AND HIS MOTHER BASED ON THIS ARTCLE FUCK TAI CHI FUCK YOGA THEY TREATED MY FUCKING NEPHEW LIKE SHIT HE CALLED ME NUMEROUS TIMES CRYING ABOUT HOW HE WANTED TO LEAVE I COULDNT FUCKING HELP HIM BECAUSE WE'RE THE SAME AGE IM FOUR MONTHS OLDER IF I WAS THAN THAT I WOULDVE COMMITTED MY LIFE TO HELPING HIM AND BITCH YOU SCREAMING DEATH WELL GUESS WHAT HE DID DIE YOU STUPID BITCH & IF I EVER SEE YOU OR ANY IF YALL ALL YALL MOTHERFUCKERS GOING DIE